


Communication Issues

by vials



Category: Our Kind of Traitor - John le Carré
Genre: F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, also featuring Luke's regret which is basically a character of its own at this point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 12:44:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10877046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vials/pseuds/vials
Summary: Even Luke hadn't been optimistic enough to think that he and Eloise could have left their troubles back in Columbia. He's been kidnapped and beaten and betrayed and tortured, but still the one thing he cannot face is his own wife.





	Communication Issues

Eloise had been hovering in the doorway for the entire time, and Luke really wished she would just go away. She was waiting to say something, and whatever she said would be cruel. He had been braced against the blow for some time, but she hadn’t delivered it. He wondered if she knew what she was going to say yet, or if he had just picked up an unnatural ability for sensing it before she did over the last couple of months.

He moved around the room slowly, not because he wanted to drag the whole thing out or because he didn’t know what to bring, but because he physically couldn’t move any quicker. He could feel his injuries were obvious in how he moved; knew Eloise would be able to see all the evidence and he wondered, briefly, if she might feel bad. Luke was sometimes the kind of person to give himself into fantasy, especially when the outcomes of reality were all so dismal. He thought, maybe, there was a chance that Eloise was remembering what he had been through, remembering that even though she didn’t know any of the details (and Luke would never tell her) she knew for a fact that Luke had suffered, horribly, through no fault of his own. It had been the dangers of the job and he had faced those dangers every day while knowing the risk, and now here was proof that he had suffered, that he had gone to those impossible lengths for his job, for his country, for what he believed in. Surely there was something admirable in that? And if he couldn’t have that, surely Luke could have a bit of sympathy?

He got no such thing, of course. He could feel her glare on his back as he folded some shirts and tucked them into a corner of his suitcase, and suddenly he felt self-conscious. What if he had it all wrong? He had been wrong on so much, after all – why shouldn’t he believe he was capable of reading his own wife wrong? She was probably having the same dilemma with him. Perhaps she was looking at him and not feeling sympathy in the slightest. Perhaps it was disgust. Perhaps she thought that Luke was _faking_ it, god forbid – that he was deliberately exaggerating the pain he was in simply to illicit sympathy. Quite suddenly Luke felt disgusted for even wanting it in the first place, as though he had played directly into her game, and then he felt immediately guilty for assuming that Eloise was playing a game to begin with. Why was he so determined to cast her as the villain? After all, he had been the one to cheat on her. Could he really blame her for any of this?

He thought about turning around, about trying to say something, but what could he say? _Sorry about the affair, I didn’t mean it, honest?_ She would know that was bullshit and she was right. It wasn’t as though it had been a one-off. It wasn’t as though it had been some horrible drunken mistake, and Luke could preach about cover stories and blending in and _it was for the job_ all he wanted; he knew he was a liar and he knew that Eloise knew it, too. 

Briefly he forgot how to pack. He had done it how many times, and now he was standing next to the bed that had only been theirs for a week, and even then he hadn’t slept in it. He couldn’t remember where everything had been placed since the move, and try as he might, he could not focus on where his damn socks would be. 

“What are you doing?” Eloise eventually snapped, and Luke started slightly, taken by surprise by her voice. He had been expecting her to speak at some point, of course, but he had been sure it would have been a quieter comment, something cutting on his way out rather than that sound that had broken through the silence in the room. 

“I’m trying to think,” he said, though he didn’t say about what, because he didn’t think he could stand the thought of her ridiculing him right now.

“Well, hurry up,” she said. “I want you out of here tonight. And don’t wake Ben up, for the love of god.”

“I still think it’s highly unfair you’re not letting me say a proper goodbye to him,” Luke said, because that was at least something that he could fight her on. That was at least safe ground – she wouldn’t be too cruel to him about their son, because she could believe that he at least loved Ben. 

“You said goodnight to him.”

“Yes, but when I’m not there in the morning –”

“He will hardly be surprised, Luke.”

Alright, so evidently he had been wrong. She _could_ be cruel about Ben. Luke felt as though there were something cold in his chest, and to his horror he wanted to cry. He had never been a crier before, at least not where anybody could see him. As far as he was concerned that was the same thing – if no one saw him then there had been no proof that it happened. He swallowed instead, feeling a lump in his throat that wouldn’t move no matter how many times he tried to budge it.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Eloise snapped. Luke tried to tell himself again that this was all because of the cheating, that she was angry at him for that and rightly so, and that anything she said that wasn’t directly relevant to that was probably her trying to hurt him and again, rightly so. For some reason, it wasn’t working this time.

“Like what?” he asked, hating how thick his voice sounded. 

“Like you’re so shocked to hear it,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Like you’re about to cry. What’s gotten into you lately? All of the things you never cared about before, all of a sudden you’re in tears over.”

“I suppose nearly dying has kind of opened my eyes to a few things,” Luke said, unable to resist going ever so slightly for shock value. It always felt cheap when he did it, as though he were appropriating his own hell, but sometimes it was impossible not to rise to her. Eloise had a wonderful way of shaping her face into a mask. When she did it, especially lately, Luke could almost believe that she had never loved him for a day in her life. 

“And by that I trust you mean you became fully aware of all the things you should have never done?” Eloise asked, raising an eyebrow. “What happened to you was terrible, Luke, but you can’t come in here and start using it as an excuse for adultery and barely seeing your child.”

“I want to try again,” Luke said, hating how desperate he sounded. “Eloise, look – I _know_ I made a terrible mistake. I know it. I hate myself for it more and more every day. If I had to go through what I went through again and again, over and over, and have it erase all the shitty things I did to you and to Ben I would do it, hands down, no questions asked. You know I would. You must know I’m sorry.”

“You weren’t sorry at the time,” Eloise said coldly. “You weren’t sorry every time you let Ben down because something came up that you’d forgotten about, and you decided to leave him hanging. You weren’t sorry every single time you snuck about to that bitch’s house for some quality time with her. Why are you sorry now?”

“I got comfortable,” Luke said desperately. “When you do something for so long, you start to forget how bad it is. And I know that sounds awful but you must understand. The first few times you do it you feel shocked, or you feel bad, and maybe with some things that’s part of the allure but with others it isn’t –”

“You mean it was part of the allure for sleeping with her?” Eloise asked. She had a frightful way of summing up what he was saying in a way that made him feel as though he should have signed his own death warrant himself and saved her a job. “And that it wasn’t part of the allure for when you were constantly letting down your son?”

“Yes,” Luke said, and he actually had to close his eyes for a moment because he couldn’t look at her and it wasn’t as though he could simply turn away from her. “Yes, that is what I meant. I know it sounds awful, but it’s a known fact. But with Ben I did feel bad. I felt awful from day one, but I felt as though I didn’t have a choice. Eventually he stopped caring, or so it seemed, and I know now that that wasn’t a good thing at all, that it was him just giving up on me, and I know I should have listened to you but by that point I was so busy at work that I had to delude myself into thinking it so I could get through the day. I was a lousy father, I was a lousy husband, and if there was someone out there willing to make me feel like I wasn’t lousy after all, of course I was going to take it. I was weak. I was stupid.”

“You would go to another woman for comfort rather than coming to me?” Eloise asked, and then she gave a very undignified snort. “That doesn’t sound like a very good argument, Luke. In fact, it really does make you sound like the cowardly little prick I know you are.”

“Of course I couldn’t go to you for comfort,” Luke said, feeling himself growing angry though he had told himself that he would try and remain calm, that he would accept his guilt through letting Eloise throw whatever she wanted at him.

“Why not?” Eloise demanded. “I’m your wife, in case you forgot.”

“I had forgot!” Luke snapped. “You hated me! You were always on at me about Ben, and I felt bad enough as it was but what could I _do_ , Eloise? I could hardly call work and tell them no, sorry, I can’t. My line of work isn’t the line of work where I can do that! How do you think I would explain it? Didn’t go to an emergency crash meeting with my agent because I had to read my kid a bedtime story? Believe me, I would love to be able to say that but it simply wouldn’t fly. I couldn’t come to you about it because I knew you’d just tell me I was right!”

“And you never thought, not even for one moment, that maybe you could try and change things?” Eloise asked. She had crossed her arms and was leaning against the door frame, blocking the way out, and suddenly Luke felt panicked. He wished she wasn’t standing there, he wished there was a window open.

“Can you just –” he began, but his chest was tight and he knew that it was probably too late for anything to be done now. The only other choice he had was their en-suite bathroom; though it was much smaller than the bedroom it was clean and cool and he could shut himself in by his own choice, and there would be no one else in there with him.

“Don’t you dare walk away!” Eloise called after him, and he thought he should probably explain, that he sort of owed it to her to not walk away as though he were storming off to lock himself in the bathroom in a sulk.

Unfortunately that was exactly what it looked like, because by the time Luke had forced his feet to carry him across the room he could barely speak, and the tightness in his chest was so bad that all he could think about was getting to a place where he hoped it might be loosened. He could focus only on getting into the bathroom and he practically tripped over himself as he hurried over there. Somewhere behind him he thought he heard Eloise mutter something like _unbelievable_ , and as much as the shame crawled at him he didn’t have the mental strength to turn around and tell her what was actually going on. Was it possible that his uneven steps made it look as though he were storming across the room? Was it possible that she thought he had slammed the door? Maybe he had. He couldn’t remember, though he was so unsteady on his feet and so far removed from his body by the time he got into the bathroom that he thought it was highly likely that he might have forgotten his own strength and slammed the door instead.

His hands were shaking violently and every part of him ached. It took him several panicked tries to slide the bolt lock over, panicked because he was sure he could hear Eloise walking over to the bathroom and he had no idea what he would do if she opened the door and blocked it, or if she came inside with him. There were warm tracks on his face and his heart was thudding so hard in his chest that he was worried it might give out; he had never felt panic like it, or at least, not since the last time he had had one of these episodes. Every time he had one he thought it was the worst one ever; he could never remember feeling fear or panic like it, his heart had never thudded so painfully, his thoughts had never raced so fast. Every time was like the first time, and Luke didn’t know how much longer he could do it for.

The door was locked and he was safe for now; with a solid lump of wood between himself and another human he felt secure enough that he could let his legs give out from under him. If Eloise was knocking on the door he could barely hear it; if she were knocking he could ignore it. He leaned forward and rested his head on the edge of the bathtub, trying to find his breathing rhythm, the one that usually helped. Ironically it had been something he had picked up from his training, when they had been teaching them how to withstand interrogation should the worst happen, but the worst had happened to Luke and he was still reconciling with the idea that the worst for him hadn’t been interrogation at all. He hadn’t even had the luxury of knowing their torment of him had been for a reason; that he could stoically stick it out and know that he was suffering for a greater cause. No, their treatment of him had been pure fun and games, sadism, whatever he wanted to call it. Passing the time, probably, seems there wasn’t much else to do in that jungle shithole of theirs. 

Eloise didn’t know this, of course, and Luke would never tell her. Thanks to the fact she would never have access to the debriefings, she would never find out. He didn’t know what he would do if she knew it had all been for nothing; that her husband hadn’t been tortured for information that he had refused to give – that he hadn’t been heroic then, either. What was there to endure when it was all for nothing? Luke let out a soft groan and pressed his head further against the bathtub, fighting the urge to bang his head off of it.

“Luke!”

The banging on the door was still there, and Luke squeezed his eyes tighter. He felt trapped again. Christ, what was he going to do if she trapped him even in here?

“Luke! Open the door! I can’t _believe_ you’re doing this! How old are you? I get better responses from _Ben_ during arguments, and he’s only—”

“Can you please _shut up_?” Luke yelled. He had meant to only yell loud enough to be heard through the door, but the words had come out louder than he had intended and they bounced off the tiles surrounding him, amplifying them further still. He thought he should maybe apologise, try and reel himself in, maybe explain that he needed her to back off for a moment, that it was nothing to do with their discussion, that sometimes this happened to him these days and he had no idea why. He wanted to tell her that it was awful for him too, that he didn’t like being this way, that he didn’t appreciate having to bail out of conversations and he hated how he couldn’t sleep with doors closed and how any room that was bigger than the size of that damn cage they had kept him in was too big – and then it hit him, why he wanted to be in the bathroom, because it was _small_ , and the hatred and the anger overtook him again and he couldn’t have been civil if he tried.

“No, I _can’t_ shut up! I can’t believe I’m trying to talk to you about your own damn infidelity and you’re telling me to shut up! Who do you think you are?”

“I said shut _up_!” Luke yelled, and this time he sat up and pushed himself around, slamming both his hands against the door. He felt Eloise’s shock reverberate through it, heard her take a step back, and somewhere in the back of his mind he registered that he should feel bad about it, and that he probably would, later, and that he really wasn’t helping his cause, and that he might wake Ben up. All of these thoughts registered briefly and then vanished back into the racing thoughts that were threatening to consume him; he needed to be alone, he needed to get away, he couldn’t _do_ this—

He hadn’t been aware of the fact that he had been shouting some of this through the door. Only when he heard the bedroom door slam did he realise that Eloise had left, and he waited to feel guilt or remorse or worry that he had gone and ruined everything twice over but it didn’t come. Instead the only thing that hit him was relief, and he slumped down onto the cool bathroom floor and breathed the silence in.


End file.
